The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds, Revised Edition by Dr. Edgar Mitchell & Dwight Arnan Williams

Author:Dr. Edgar Mitchell & Dwight Arnan Williams [Mitchell, Edgar & Williams, Dwight Arnan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nonfiction, science, space, spirituality, consciousness, extraterrestrial life, astronauts, project apollo
ISBN: 9781564149770
Amazon: B001O5BF22
Publisher: New Page Books
Published: 2008-02-15T06:00:00+00:00

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Information was first defined in scientific terms by Norbert Weiner of MIT, the father of cybernetics, circa 1942. He gave it an elegantly simple definition: the numerical equal to the negative of entropy. In a famous paper published in 1948, James Shannon of Bell Laboratories initiated information theory from which all modern communications techniques are derived. Engineers and scientists agree that information is basically just a pattern of energy. What is tacitly assumed is that the meaning of the information is carried in the signal itself. In other words, any mind should interpret information the same way; if it doesn't, then it is because that particular mind is ignorant of that particular meaning. To understand how consciousness knows anything at all, we must examine this idea more deeply, as it contains a critical flaw.

Imagine a family of four: a mother, a husband who is a fireman, their child, and a mother-in-law who is deaf. One night while they are all asleep a fire engine from the husband's station roars down the street, passing their house, sirens crying through the neighborhood. The wife awakens, hears the fire truck rush by, and thinks, "Thank God, it's not our house." The husband awakens and thinks, "Sounds like of #4. It's probably Joe heading for Oak Street." The child awakens, frightened by the loud noise, and begins to cry. The mother-in-law is roused, but doesn't remember a thing and goes back to sleep.

Each of the three who received the information attached a different meaning to the sound. One received no conscious information at all. The usual meaning intended for fire truck sirens is, Get the hell out of the way, I'm coming through. Clearly the meaning attached to information is not discerned the same by all who receive it. If there is intentional meaning in the signal, it must be placed there by some intending entity, presumably one that knows how to manage information intentionally. Managing information intentionally is, of course, a wonderful, basic definition for intelligence. Therefore, we cannot state that the meaning of information is contained in the signal. Even if it were, there is no assurance that any receiving entity will perceive its meaning.

The meaning of a signal, therefore, must be defined as the meaning the percipient of the information attaches to it, which may be as varied as the number of percipients. Thus the intended meaning and the meaning the percipient attaches to it may not be one and the same. This fact is obvious when one stops to think about it, as everyone has experienced failed communication with someone. Only by some method of achieving a consensus between the sender and receiver can common meaning be assigned by the exchange of information.

Likewise, the patterns of energy in nature contain no discernible inherent meaning. Ancient astrologers attached a different meaning to celestial patterns than do modern astronomers. I suggest that it is a fundamental function of consciousness to assign meaning to the information that the organism perceives. Meaning is merely

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